


three times beau and yasha kissed under mistletoe and one time they didn't

by alexdxnvers



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Modern AU, but i'm showing up anyways, here have some cliches and beauyasha, i'm showing up late with holiday fics bc of writing deadlines over the holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-10-08 04:34:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17379650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexdxnvers/pseuds/alexdxnvers
Summary: Beau and Yasha kiss under mistletoe three times. One time they don't. Pretty much what it says on the tin.





	1. Chapter 1

Beau isn’t sure what she imagined when Jester had told her she was having a party for the holidays. For some reason she had thought that Jester would have invited a miniature crowd to cram into her small place - Jester’s cheerful and talkative enough to everyone she meets that Beau can almost forget that neither of them have lived here that long, and even if Jester had been chatting up every person she encountered, there hasn’t been enough time to consistently talk to enough people to fill up a small home for the holidays.

Beau is no stranger to parties. She’s never minded loud music and getting wasted and people crammed together in small spaces dancing when there’s barely the room for it, but small gatherings like these make her feel slightly out of place (maybe they remind her of the small, formal parties she’d been made to go to as a child, where she’d never behaved like her father had wanted her to, not that she’d tell anyone that). It doesn’t help much that the only person in this room that she knows is Fjord, and everyone else seems occupied enough with the movie playing on Jester’s TV or with someone else that Beau doesn’t really feel like brashly interrupting jutting into a conversation is a good move right now, not when she’d promised Jester that she’d try not to piss anyone off tonight. 

She’s barely been at Jester’s for ten minutes before she wanders out of the living room, trying to find their host - Fjord had let her in, and he’d told her she was in the kitchen helping to get someone a drink, but Beau had yet to see Jester, and a drink was never a bad idea.

Someone rounded the corner into the kitchen doorway just as Beau was stepping into it, emerging almost without warning from behind the wall. All Beau caught was a glimpse of a dark gray sweater before she collided with the other person, and took a quick step away right into the doorframe.

“Sorry-”

“No, my bad, I-” Beau says, looking up at the person and suddenly forgetting how words work. She’s seen the woman standing in front of her before. At the gym, Beau thinks, even though she’s not sure because her brain’s short-circuiting slightly. Always from a distance though, and never up-close… definitely never not this close. “Uh. Hi.”

The woman gives Beau a small smile. “Hello.”

“Aha!” Jester yells, suddenly appearing in Beau’s peripheral vision. “Finally! Kiss, kiss, kiss!”

“I… Jester, what the fuck are you talking about?” Beau says.

The woman in the doorway, head tilted back during this exchange, points up as Jester does. Beau follows the direction they’re pointing, until she’s looking up at a small cluster of mistletoe hung right in the center of the doorway. 

“Well,” Beau says. “Okay, then.”

Beau lowers her gaze to shoot a smirk at the other woman. Her cheeks seem to be slowly turning pink, and even though she’s returning Beau’s smile she’s not quite meeting her eyes.

“Okay,” Beau says. “Jester-“

“Come on, Beau, you and Yasha are the first ones all night to be in this doorway at the same time-“

“Yeah, but you can’t make people-“

”What if I leave? Will you make out if I leave?”

”... yes. We will make out if you- hey!”

Jester’s much stronger than she appears, something Beau’s reminded of as Jester darts into the narrow space between her back and the doorway, yelling “Okay! Bye! I’ll be back soon, have fun!” as she effectively pushes Beau into the woman again and runs away down the hall. 

Beau waits until she’s sure Jester’s out of earshot before looking up at again, shrugging as if to say ‘well, what can you do?’

“Yasha, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Beau,” Beau says, offering her hand up to Yasha in what little space there is between  them. She’s not sure why the both of them are still standing in the crammed doorway together, but she’s not going to be the first one to step away, especially not after Yasha takes her hand to shake it instead of stepping away herself. “Uh… we don’t actually have to make out. Not if you don’t want to, I mean, I can just tell Jester that we did, she’s never actually gonna find out otherwise.”

Yasha laughs at that. “That’s sweet. Thank you.”

Beau can count on one hand the number of times someone’s called her sweet - most of those times have ended with someone leaving the encounter with a broken bone. Yasha saying it, however, doesn’t rile Beau up like she would normally have expected it to.

Before Beau can say anything else, Yasha’s leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss against Beau’s lips. It’s not much, barely a gentle passing brush of skin, and Yasha’s standing up straight again before Beau has time to react.

“I’ll see you around,” Yasha says over her shoulder. Beau stares after her, mouth opening and closing as she tries and fails to find something appropriate to say in response, and by then Yasha’s long gone.

“Was it gooooood?”

“Fuck!” Beau swears, jumping back into the doorway again. 

“Was it, though?” Jester prods. “Oh! Your cheeks are turning pink! I’ve never seen you blush before, Beau, it looks very pretty.”

“I’m not- I’m not blushing, Jester, fuck off,” Beau says, turning abruptly and making her escape.

It takes Beau another ten minutes to realize that she never got the drink she went to the kitchen for in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's me, showing up almost three weeks late to the holidays with some fic cliches and beauyasha content ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> I kinda feel like this is leaning slightly sideways into being a little ooc, which tends to happen whenever I do short one-shots in modern AUs that I haven't thought that much about otherwise and especially since I... may or may not be working on a multi-chapter modern AU beauyasha fic rn anyways, but this was meant to be a fun little holiday thing because I didn't get to write as much holiday fic this year as I usually do, so I'm not gonna let it bother me too much and we'll see how the next three chapters go. ANYWAYS, thanks for reading and coming along for the ride, stay tuned for the next few chapters soon...ish? Soon. I'm trying to remember how to write tiny drabbles instead of making things longer than they should be...


	2. Chapter 2

Mollymauk and Beau had not gotten off on the right foot at Jester’s holiday party, and Beau’s pretty sure that Jester and Fjord are the only reason why she’d gotten an invitation to his own holiday party a week and a half later in the first place. Beau _knows_ that the only reason she ends up going at all is because Jester and Fjord insisted on her going with them.

Beau will give Molly this, though - he knows how to throw a decent party.

The music - a chaotic mixture of holiday music and songs that definitely are not holiday appropriate - is loud enough that Beau’s body almost seems to be thrumming in beat with it the second she enters, even over the loud roar of conversation. Molly says something to Jester and Fjord in front of her as they’re let in that Beau doesn’t quite catch, and she’s left stuck just inside the entryway as people try to squeeze past her coming in and going out. She can’t exactly go anywhere with the trio blocking her in. Molly eventually makes his way back to her, shutting the front door, and without a greeting yells something about his roommates and the two rooms upstairs that are still off limits. Beau thinks she hears him say something about his own room, but he’s turning around and leaving before Beau can ask for clarification.

… it’s not like she really gives a fuck about listening to what Molly has to say, though.

Jester and Fjord have disappeared into the crowd, so Beau does the same - she finds a drink and lets herself disappear into a throng of people dancing near a music source. She keeps an eye out for her friends, and she thinks she sees some of the people she’d been introduced to at Jester’s party, but not Yasha - not that Beau would admit to specifically keeping an eye out for her. Beau doesn’t know how much time has passed since they arrived by the time she sees Jester again. The other woman looks positively flushed, a stupid happy grin on her face as she waves at Beau.

“You look happy,” Beau yells, leaning in.

“Do I?” Jester yells back.

“Yeah!”

“I’ve been making out with Fjord!” Jester shouts.

“... okay."

“I like him so, so much, Beau!” Jester says loudly. Before Beau can say anything else, Jester’s wrapping a hand around her arm and tugging her out of the crowd of dancers, into the quieter hallway. “He kissed me upstairs because we didn’t see the mistletoe Molly put in the hall, and he’s got mistletoe in some of the doorways too and we kind just kept ending up under it, and then we went to go find somewhere to sit down, and there wasn’t any mistletoe above the couch but we still-”

“Okay, I think that's all I want to hear, thanks,” Beau says, finally freeing herself from Jester’s grip and giving her arm a quick shake to get the circulation going again.

“Jes!”

Beau watches Jester’s face somehow glow impossibly brighter as she turns and beams at Fjord as he approaches. She turns away from Beau and throws her arms around his neck when he draws near enough. Fjord doesn’t give Beau more than a quick nod before he leans down to wrap his arms around Jester in return. Beau keeps her gaze on him as he does so, waiting to see if Jester’s might have been exaggerating how Fjord’s been returning her affections, which has definitely happened before, or if Fjord is going along with it to make Jester happy, which happens more often than not. He doesn’t seem to be holding himself back just a little as he usually does though, leaning wholeheartedly into Jester’s tight hug. Beau’s not sure if the fact that both of them have definitely had a few to drink by now, or if things are clicking into place after months of watching them dance around each other, but something’s definitely happening there now.

There’s a moment where Beau’s heart swells just a little bit out of happiness for Jester and Fjord and the fact that they’ve maybe started to get their shit together, but then it occurs to her that now she’s standing by herself in this hallway watching Fjord and Jester embrace. She clears her throat loudly, but neither of them seem to hear it.

Beau doesn’t really feel like being a third wheel tonight.

She gives them another moment, and then she turns and disappears back into the crowd, leaving them to themselves.

 

* * *

 

She can’t remember what prompted her to head upstairs, or what compelled her to take the stairs two at a time. Regardless, Beau takes the turn on the last landing up to the second floor maybe a bit too sharply - something lurches in her stomach as she reaches the top of the staircase. She reaches out for something to steady herself, planting her palm on the wall, and keeps lingering against the surface as she moves until her fingers reach a door frame.

Beau drops, her tailbone hitting the ground a little harder than she had meant it to, and she braces her back against one side of the doorway and pushes her foot up against the other, resting her head on her knee. The world’s spinning just a little bit, and maybe if she sits for a moment, it’ll go away, and she can find Jester and Fjord to drive her home.

There’s no way how long she’s sitting there before someone passing by actually stops next to her. Beau can just see dark gray socks through the fringes of hair that have escaped from her bun throughout the night.

“Are you alright?”

Beau glances up then, and decides that she is very much not alright, because the girl from Jester’s party is standing there, looking down at Beau with concern.

“Yasha!” Beau says, and then “I was looking for you downstairs earlier” slips out of her mouth before her brain can catch up, and the urge to crawl into a hole and die makes a sudden appearance.

Yasha either doesn’t catch the implication of Beau’s statement, or decides not to comment on it, as she squats down so that Beau doesn’t have to look up to meet her eyes. “You never answered my question.”

“I’m great.”

“You’re slurring your words. Molly’s been making drinks a bit strong for the last hour or so.”

“Huh,” Beau says.

“Do you have a ride home? It’s getting late.”

“Jester,” Beau says. “Or Fjord. I don’t remember. Are you kicking me out?”

“No,” Yasha replies, “even though maybe we should think about getting you out of the door to my bedroom.”

“Oh,” Beau says, turning her head to take in the room next to her for the first time. She doesn’t know what she would have expected from Yasha’s room, but the shades of gray and navy and black across the decor seem right. Her gaze continues to wander, and, glancing up, Beau notices for cluster of mistletoe hanging in the doorway above her. They’re hanging in the other open doors down this hall too, now that Beau’s looking.

Maybe that’s why Yasha’s still awkwardly squatting in the hall.

“This seems familiar,” Beau points out. “Didn’t we just do this?”

“... Molly thought it’d be funny, listen, do you want to go home?” Yasha’s glancing down the hallway, as if doing so will suddenly make someone appear to take Beau off her hands.

“Home seems nice,” Beau sighs, leaning back against the doorframe. “Lying down sounds great. Beds are great. My bed is great. But not _home_ home, I really don’t fucking want to go back home-”

“Okay, I’m going to go find Fjord or Jester,” Yasha says, quickly standing up again. She hovers for a moment. “Please do not throw up in my room.”

Beau gives a lazy salute in acknowledgement.

Yasha takes a step towards the stairs, then does a quick turn and heads the other way down the hall. After a minute she returns with a glass of water.

“Drink,” Yasha says. She waits until Beau takes a sip from the glass before heading downstairs.

Beau downs half the glass before she carefully sets it down on the carpet and pulls her knees up against her chest, slumping sideways and dozing off. When she wakes again, someone’s lifting her into their arms. Beau opens her eyes, her vision filled with black and white hair and a now-familiar gray sweater. Beau closes her eyes immediately, trying to ignore the way her heart’s now thudding against her ribs.

“Funny to see you under the mistletoe again,” Beau mutters against Yasha’s shoulder.

A part of Beau’s brain is distantly going “why the _fuck_ do you have to be such a useless lesbian _all the time_ ”, but Yasha lets out a tiny laugh that Beau is all too aware of, feeling the vibration of the laugh against her ear, and every other part of her brain that’s still functioning lights up at that.

Yasha shifts Beau in her arms, just enough for her to be able to press a quick kiss to Beau’s forehead.

“That doesn’t count.”

“Caleb is driving your friends home,” Yasha says, bypassing a response to Beau’s comment and beginning to slowly walk down the hall towards the stairs, careful to keep Beau’s feet from banging into the wall as she goes. “Molly will probably let you sleep on the couch, but I can drive you home.”

“I don’t want to sleep on Mollymauk’s couch.”

“It’s my couch too.”

“Oh,” Beau says, thinking about it. Spending the night on Yasha’s couch - good plan. Probably throwing up and being a mess in the morning in front of Yasha… very bad plan. “Home’s good. Home’s very good.”

Realistically, Beau’s sober enough that she could probably walk out to Yasha’s car, but Yasha’s _strong_ , and Beau’s not complaining about being able to see that in action up close. Yasha doesn’t lower her back to her feet until they get outside, Yasha pulling the passenger door open so that Beau can collapse into the seat.

“Please don’t throw up in the car,” Yasha says quietly as she starts the engine.

“I make no promises,” Beau says under her breath, pressing her cheek against the cold window. She just remembers mumbling something in response to Yasha’s question about where she lives, but the rest of the car ride passes in a hazy blur. Beau doesn’t wake until they’re parked outside her building, Yasha clearing her throat as she unlocks the car doors.

“Do you need me to help you inside?” Yasha asks, watching Beau almost trip out of the passenger seat before her feet find the ground.

“I think I’ll make it,” Beau says.

“Okay,” Yasha says. Beau wobbles slightly as she reaches to swing the door shut again, but stays on her feet, shooting a cocky grin through the window as Yasha rolls it down.

“Thank you for not throwing up in the car. Molly’ll appreciate it.”

Beau pauses, eying the car again. _Well. Next time._

Yasha’s just beginning to pull out of the driveway when Beau presses her cheek to her window when she gets upstairs. She thinks she might see one pale hand raised against the driver’s side window before the car disappears down the street, but it’s snowing, and Beau’s too tired to really be sure, too tired to do more than kick off her boots and pants before falling face-first into bed.

She doesn't remember it in the morning, everything else in her mind being pushed aside by the pounding headache she wakes with, but Beau falls asleep to dreams of strong arms and the feeling of gentle lips pressed against her forehead. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, in the notes for the last chapter: "I'm trying to remember how to write tiny drabbles"
> 
> Also me: ... this chapter is twice as long as the last one and I don't know how that happened...
> 
> The next chapter's probably going to be super short, since the last chapter will probably run longer than it needs to again, so heads up, but if you're still following along with this lil holiday fic at the end of January now, thank you! I hope you're enjoying it :)


	3. Chapter 3

Beau has almost forgotten how Yasha’s lips had felt pressed up against hers in the year it’s been since they’d met at Jester’s party, and now she lets herself admit internally how much she’s been craving this again. The sound of their friends elsewhere in the house fades away as Yasha pulls away for just a moment to take a breath before Beau’s following the tilt of her head back up for another kiss, and Beau finds herself not caring if any of them head this way and find them making out in the doorway, not when Yasha’s resting her hands on the small of Beau’s back and pulling her closer. 

One of them makes a muffled whimpering noise - Beau has no idea which one of them it is, not that it matters, but it’s enough to snap some part of her brain out of the constant stream of  _ Yasha, Yasha, Yasha,  _ going through her mind to realize where they are and what they’re doing. It’s not somewhere they haven’t been before, crowded together, mistletoe hanging over their heads. But still, something tight and uncomfortable begins to coil up in Beau’s stomach.

This is not how Beau wanted this to happen again, and that fact is making itself more and more known in Beau’s brain even as every other part of her body yearns to be even closer to the other woman. She’s never been one to turn away from fear, but she can’t ignore the sudden dread that doing this now might ruin everything for them afterwards.

Because Beau likes Yasha.

Beau  _ really  _ likes Yasha.

“You looooooooooove her,” Jester had said teasingly some point around Halloween. Fjord had followed it up with a “Damn it, Beau, get your jaw off the floor before Yasha gets over here,” and Beau had promptly flipped both of them off before booking it to the other end of the building, pacing in circles through the halls until her cheeks don’t feel warm anymore, and she thinks she can look Yasha in the eye without instantly swooning. 

… Yasha wears ripped costume tank tops very well. There really isn’t anything else Beau has to say about that. 

She doesn’t really have much to say about liking Yasha, either. Handling her feelings has never been one of her strong points, and talking about them tends to go even worse. It’s not that she doesn’t have anyone to talk to, either - Jester has offered ( _ multiple  _ times, very enthusiastically) to talk about it with Beau. Beau’s been tempted to take her up on it, but more often than not the thought of talking about the way her heart’s been fluttering in her chest every time she sees Yasha makes her feel uncomfortably vulnerable, and she always ends up bailing to go for a run or take comfort in a punching bag, anything that lets Beau pretend that the pounding in her heart just comes purely from exercise, and not from the little daydreams that have started playing out in her head. 

Daydreams that end like this, with Yasha holding Beau in her arms like she doesn’t want to let go, but those dreams had always included something more than a year’s worth of terrible jokes and awkward flirting. They’re both dragging around so much baggage - everyone in their new little family is dragging around a shit ton of baggage - that they should be talking about. She should have actually told Yasha she likes her, that this has always been about more than just Beau making heart eyes at any strong, attractive woman she passes by. This feels a step away from Beau’s one night only hookups, and those have never ended well for the parties involved.

She wants this to end well.

Beau’s so in her head that she barely notices Yasha’s hands shifting down to grab the back of her thighs to hoist her up. She jolts violently at her weight suddenly being lifted off the ground, breaking away from Yasha and feeling a momentary bolt of panic as she feels her balance shift in a way it definitely shouldn’t be. Yasha had been moving them towards a wall, and in her split-second of panic Beau thinks she might have picked up the speed to stop Beau from falling right out of her arms. Instead, Beau’s back hit the wall hard. Yasha’s fast enough letting go of one of her legs to cradle the back of Beau’s head, her knuckles taking the impact of hitting the wall instead of it being Beau’s skull.

“Shit, Beau, sorry, I’m-”

“Down,” Beau manages. She suddenly feels like she’s about to be sick. “Down, down, down.”

Yasha’s grip on Beau’s thigh loosens so quickly that for a second Beau worries that she’s about to be dropped, but Yasha lets go of the back of her head to gently lower Beau back to the floor. The second her feet touch the ground, Beau slips right past Yasha, bracing her shoulder against the wall. She rarely feels claustrophobic, but being stuck between Yasha and a literal hard place hadn’t felt good at all. Of course she’s already fucked this all up. It’s been all of five minutes, and Beau’s already managed to make a right mess of things.

“Beau?”

Beau almost immediately regrets looking up at Yasha, because the other woman has a strange look on her face, one of concern, and… fear? Regret? She doesn’t seem to know how to react to this, which is reasonable. Beau doesn’t think Yasha’s ever seen her genuinely freak out about something before.

“I think I’m drunk,” Beau blurts.

“You’ve… barely had anything to drink,” Yasha says.

“Ha,” Beau says. “Funny that.”

Yasha’s lip turns up in a tiny smile.

And then, because Beau is an idiot: “I don’t think I can do this.”

_ Right now _ , is what she should have added to the end of that, Beau realizes, but by the time that thought flashes through her head there’s been too many seconds of terrible, still silence between them that Beau can’t find the courage to break. 

Yasha’s face does another thing, except this time after the quick flashes of confusion then hurt, Beau sees a wall slam up somewhere in Yasha’s mind, her expression going almost blank.

Well, fuck. One more thing that Beau’s ruined tonight. Another relationship she doesn’t know how to fix, so Beau does what she does best.

She runs.

She can hear the others more clearly the further she moves away from Yasha, left alone in the hallway. There’s a sudden burst of laughter as she passes a doorway, and she sees them all out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t think any of them see her, since she’s all but sprinting for the front door at this point, but before she makes it to the door she hears footsteps approaching behind her.

“Beau?”

“Not now,” Beau says, not even stopping as she tries to yank the front door open before she’s finished turning the lock.

“Beauregard.”

“What, Caleb?” Beau snaps, finally turning. Caleb’s standing about ten feet behind her, and stops in his tracks when Beau faces him.

“Ah,” Caleb says. Beau doesn’t know how much of a mess she looks like already, but she can see his immediate reaction to seeing her face. She doesn’t like it one bit. “Are you… okay?”

“I’m fucking dandy, Caleb,” she says. Before the words are even fully out of her mouth, a door slams somewhere else in the house. The laughter from the next room dies down, and Molly appears behind Caleb, looking at Beau and then away in the direction of the slam.

“I’m leaving,” Beau says, turning back to the front door and finally getting the damn lock to twist under her shaking hands. 

“Where are you going?” Caleb calls.

Beau ignores him, slamming the front door shut behind her for good measure and taking to the streets, quickly disappearing into the dark and cold. 

_ Fuck. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't do more than a quick proofread of this after finishing it because midterm week(s) is kicking me to the ground and I'm not sure I know what words are anymore, so apologies for any errors that didn't get taken out of this chapter... one more to go!


	4. 4

Yasha loves flowers.

That’s as good a place to start as any. Much better than the few letters that Beau had attempted to start writing before quickly scrapping them, throwing the little balls of paper across the room at the wastebasket while she tried not to tear her hair out in frustration. Definitely better than ignoring Caleb’s text about everyone hanging out at the coffee shop on Beau’s street, or opening Yasha’s contact page on her phone just to stare at it for minutes on end before throwing her phone back on her bed without doing anything.

Flowers are easy, when the alternative is Beau continuing to sink ever deeper into her pit of overthinking. She’s never done well with thinking about things  _ this  _ much before impulsively picking an action to take, and if she paces around her room anymore she might just wear a hole straight through the floor. So, flowers it is.

Beau’s spent months listening to Yasha talk about flowers, watching her pressing the delicate petals flat between pages of her book. She doesn’t know all of them by name, but she remembers what the ones Yasha likes best look like. Remembers them well enough to be able to pick them out as she walks through one of the nearby flower shops, probably paying way more than she should for the small bouquet she ends up with before she heads straight to Yasha’s and finds herself hesitating outside her door. 

Beau really hopes that Yasha’s home. She’s not sure if she’s going to be able to find the courage to do this again if she isn’t. Maybe she can just move. It would probably suck and be the worst decision she could ever make, but it also wouldn’t be the first time she’s up and left to another city to get away from someone she couldn’t find the strength to deal with.

“You’re being a dumbass,” Beau says under her breath. She holds the bouquet behind her back with one hand, and finally knocks on the door. 

A moment too late, it occurs to Beau that she really should have checked whether or not Molly’s here before she’d knocked, because she really doesn’t want to have to do this in front of him.  _ Fuck. _

It doesn’t take long for the door to swing open, but Beau can feel her skin beginning to crawl while she waits and worries, wondering if she knocked too quietly and if she should knock again but what if Yasha heard her the first time, knocking again might just be annoying,  _ what if Molly’s home and hears _ , but then the door is open and instead of looking at the wooden grain, Beau’s suddenly looking at Yasha’s favorite grey sweater. Beau glances up, not sure what she’s expecting to see, but the only thing written across Yasha’s face that Beau can pick out is mild surprise.

“Oh,” Yasha says. “Beauregard.”

“Hey,” Beau says.

“Hi.”

“Um, I… is Molly here?”

“No.”

“Cool,” Beau says for lack of a better response, and, because she can see the surprise disappearing from Yasha’s face to be replaced by something more guarded, pulls out what she’d been hiding behind her back. “Um, I brought you flowers.”

Yasha’s silent for a moment, looking down at the mess of colors and petals in Beau’s outstretched hand. Beau can just see the faintest blush beginning to work its way across Yasha’s cheeks as she hesitantly reaches out, fingers brushing against Beau’s as she takes the bouquet. 

“I don’t remember what any of them mean,” Beau blurts, “because I might have been distracted when you were telling me about them and the lady at the shop was trying to sell me every flower she had so I stopped listening to her, so I hope, like, the meaning of those flowers together isn’t something shitty or-”

“No,” Yasha says quietly, smiling as she runs a finger along the edge of one petal. “No, they’re nice. Thank you. But, uh… can I ask what they’re for, exactly?”

“For sticking my foot in my mouth and being an asshole the other night,” Beau says. “I didn’t mean to hurt you but I think that’s what I ended up doing? So. Sorry about that.”

“Oh,” Yasha says again. “Beau…”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t have to apologize for something you didn’t want,” Yasha says after a moment. “I’m also the one who almost dropped you on the floor.”

Yasha keeps going, but anything past that is completely lost on Beau, who’s staring blankly at Yasha trying to sort out her thoughts while the words “something you didn’t want” echoes through her brain.

It takes a moment for it to click, and all it does is really make Beau feel terrible again.

“Shit,” Beau says out loud. “I didn’t mean that. That’s not what I meant.”

Yasha stops talking, frowning down at Beau as she now tries to figure out where the conversation has gone. “What’s not what you meant?”

“When I said that I didn’t think I could do this,” Beau says. She gestures rapidly between herself and Yasha. “ _ This  _ isn’t what I meant.”

“But you said, while we were-”

“Because I’m a fucking idiot,” Beau says. “I’m the biggest idiot on the planet, clearly.”

“This is… still not clear to me. I get it, Beau, I know you like flirting and we’ve had, we’ve had moments, but I obviously that doesn’t mean you’re actually interested-” and Yasha’s laughing now, even as Beau can see her knuckles tightening around the stems of the flowers in her hand, and saying, “Really, the flirting is fine, I just-”

“I like you,” Beau blurts, because what else can she say. “And we keep getting together at stupid holiday parties and I don’t want to keep doing that because I’m  _ actually  _ into you and I have never just hooked up with someone and had it not gone terribly, and I don’t… want that. With us.”

Beau looks up at Yasha again, just in time to see the taller woman try and fail to hide a smile behind the flowers.

“So, uh,” Beau says. “How do you feel about dating, or something? Like, going out on a date. With me? Yasha, help me, please, I’m not good at this-”

“Okay,” Yasha says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Yasha echoes.

“Cool. Great!”

“But… can I just-” Yasha’s leaning forward slightly, eyes flicking down, and Beau can’t stop the grin that spreads across her face as she reaches to loop her arms around Yasha’s neck, meeting the other woman’s kiss halfway, mindful of not crushing the bouquet between them. Yasha follows her down for another kiss when Beau steps back to adjust how she’s standing on her toes, and then another one, and Beau loses track of how many small kisses she’s pressed against Yasha’s lips when a scrap of colorful fabric lands on her head and slips past Beau’s eyes, getting caught on the flowers between them.

“You’re my two favorite morons, and I’m more than happy to sit here watching you make out all day, but  _ please _ get a room before the neighbors start complaining-”

“Fuck off, Molly!” Beau and Yasha call in unison, Beau finally pulling away from Yasha to look up and flip Molly off with both hands. Molly just cackles in the open window above them, waving cheerfully as he shouts, “Be a dear and bring my scarf back in, would you?”

“In your fucking dreams,” Beau says back. Yasha laughs as she carefully pulls the scarf free of the flowers, tucking it into her back pocket away from Beau. 

“Oh, come on, Yasha, just let me leave it in the dirt or something-”

“Do you want to come in?”

Beau, immediately sidetracked from thinking about Molly, whips her head back around to look and Yasha and nod. 

“We can call it a date,” Yasha continues, sounding hopeful.

“Yes! Definitely yes, then.”

Beau’s pretty sure she hears exaggerated gagging from above them, but it’s easy enough to ignore when Yasha’s reaching for her with her free hand and planting another quick kiss to Beau’s temple as they walk inside. Molly can tease all he wants, but with Yasha bumping into her side as they make their way to the kitchen, Beau can’t find it in herself to care: there’s much better things to focus on going forward, like knowing she can reach out to pull Yasha close whenever she wants now and the promise of something  _ more _ in the future that she could have only dreamed about a year ago.

… Beau makes sure to thank Jester for the mistletoe the next time she sees her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, someone terrible at talking to people, trying to figure out how to write these two people who are terrible at communicating for different reasons actually having to communicate: "aaaAAAAAHHHH HELP"
> 
> Anyways, it's one in the morning and I have not proofread this but I'm done with finals and creative projects for school and the final chapter is way overdue so y'know... YOLO (I think I caught most of my mistakes but I'll come back and fix it again promise)
> 
> Thank you to everyone who took a moment to read this fic, and special thank you to everyone who's been following along since Christmas because this has truly been the slowest winter holiday fic to get completed ever. Getting to talk to Mercer last week about storytelling was also directly responsible for me getting my ass in gear the second classes ended and finishing this chapter before I get back to my original stuff... so everyone thank Matt for this fic getting completed skjdfsh
> 
> What we learned from this is that I'm terrible at keeping up with fics on top of my original stuff, so I'm gonna sit on my two multi-chap CR fics until I've got a decent number of chapters done, but if you want to come talk with me about one-shots or follow my original writing or just yell about any of the CR things, feel free to hit me up at elvishwriting on twitter or elvishwritings on tumblr :)


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